Excerpt from Soviet-Armenian film Nahapet Նահապետ (1977) directed by Henrik Malyan. Based on a novel by Hrachya Kochar, the film depicts the Armenian genocide of 1915. Nahapet is a survivor who tries to rebuild his life after the tragic loss of his family. The scene is accompanied with Armenian folk song “Dle Yaman” Դլե Յաման, which became a hymn of the genocide, here it is sung by Melania Abovian.
One of the recurring scenes in the film involves scores of red apples falling from a tree, rolling into a river, and floating en masse downstream. The scene is a painful symbolic reminder of the multitude of Armenian bodies thrown into the Euphrates by the Young Turk regime during the genocide. (x)
An apple tree on the lakeshore, with countless red fruits rolling down towards the blue water, is how Malyan, the ‘lyricist’ of Armenian cinema, pictures the huge loss sustained by his nation. Yet like all true metaphors, this image is multi-semantic and means not only loss but continuation, the prospect of reaching the shore one day. […] ‘salvation’ and ‘revival’ of the apple tree symbolize the rebirth of a massacred nation. (x)
